Why I Didn't Understand My Salary in Russia

When I discussed my first European salary with my first European employer, I found it hard to understand why HR constantly operates with gross figures per year. What difference does it make to me how much you will pay me before taxes if I can't influence those taxes at all? Why are you telling me that the offer is €80,000 a year when in reality I will receive €48,192, €7,352 will go to the social security fund, and another €24,456 will go to income tax? It seemed to me like some kind of refined bureaucratic sadism, constantly reminding you that the state takes 43% of your personal salary, the highest percentage possible in a progressive tax system, and disposes of this money at its discretion, deciding how much goes to bike paths, how much to education, how much to healthcare, how much to the president's salary, how much to the presidential motorcade and security, how much to free breakfasts for children from large families, how much to the defense industry, how much to promoting childbirth, how much to flowerbeds in front of parliament, an order that went to a school friend of the vice-mayor's cousin at a price inflated thirty-eight times.
Having lived in Europe for four years, I can hardly comprehend how, until I was twenty-eight, the fact that I was paying 43% of my salary in taxes completely eluded me while living in Russia. But I didn't notice and didn't ask extra questions. Because the whole system was built so that I wouldn't notice and wouldn't ask extra questions. I understood that the tiles were being relaid every year not from Sobyanin's pocket money, but I never connected the expenses for those tiles with my personal bank account. Well, yes, corruption, the state budget, but how much of that state budget comes from individual taxes. The payroll statement showed a figure of 13%, and for some reason, I stubbornly believed that the other 30% from each employee's salary calculation was paid by the employer from their own income, not from mine (humanitarians need more time to add two and two).
When the police beat unarmed protesters with batons, when the mayor flies on a private jet for a business trip costing two million rubles an hour, when the head of a loss-making state corporation earns a salary equal to the salaries of eight thousand four hundred twenty-two teachers — it’s worth remembering that all of this is done by our state on 43% of our salaries.